How to work with certifications

TalentLMS lets you award your users with custom certificates each time they complete a course. Certificates can also be set to expire after specified periods of time. That's useful in cases where you need your learners to retake courses to update their knowledge or as a regulatory requirement.

Note: By default, the Certification drop-down list is set to Classic (2). The other listed options are Fancy, Modern, and Simple, and each highlights one of the templates on the Background tab. There are many more backgrounds to choose from when creating a custom certificate (3). Alternatively, you can upload your own(4).

2. Choose one of the available backgrounds or click Upload your own background to use a different one. Click Preview (6) to see how your certificate looks when printed.3. When you're done, click Save as new (5) and type a name in the dialog box that pops up.

4. Next, go to the Template (7) tab to customize the wording of your certificate. Inside the HTML code-block, find the blocks of plain text you want to change (e.g., This certification is awarded to), and replace them with your own.

Note: Use the smart tags below the HTML code-block (8) to pull the corresponding information (first name, last name, organization, etc.) from your system. In your text, each tag appears in curly brackets (e.g., {first_name}). When your certificate is printed, the brackets are replaced by their corresponding values (e.g., the user's first name). Any custom fields that have been added to User and Course profiles are automatically available as smart tags.

5. Click Update (9) to save your changes.

Note: Be careful not to change any HTML elements in the code-block. When you've made a change by mistake, and you cannot correct it, click Reset to default template (10) to start over.

Step 2: Assign your certificate to a course

1. Go to Home > Courses, and click a course to edit.2. On the Course tab, click Certification.3. From the Select a certification drop-down list, choose a template (e.g., Classic). From the Certification duration drop-down list, choose for how long your certification is to remain valid (e.g., 1 month) (11).

Note: If necessary, choose Custom duration and use the control bar to set your preferred duration in days.

4. Check Re-assign course to user on certification expiration to remind your users that they need to retake the course to recertify.

Note: This option is displayed after you have selected the Certification duration.

5. Click Update course to complete the process.

You did it!

Now you can create your own custom certificates to award users for completing their courses.

Next steps

Want to be notified each time a certificate is awarded to one of your users? Learn how to send (and receive) automated email notifications in this article.